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There are fears that his involvement with the rail company could hold up the charity to ridicule. But his supporters point to his success before he joined Railtrack, which included time as chief executive of Thorn plc.

His interest in animal welfare has been widely reported and he recently joined the board of the Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Trust.

An RSPCA source said: "Ballard is vehemently anti-hunting, but there's much more to running the RSPCA than that.

"Her past is as a social worker, a college lecturer and an MP. She hasn't run a large organisation and has no experience with finance, and that's where the RSPCA faces real problems at the moment.

"Members of the panel were also concerned that, despite living in Iran after losing her seat at the election last year, she didn't seem very well informed about the animal welfare issues surrounding halal meat."

Mrs Ballard is supported by Dr Richard Ryder, the charity's chairman and one of the panel of six members of its ruling council interviewing today.

She is also understood to have the support of David Thomas, who is chairing the panel. He will have the casting vote if it cannot agree.

Two members, understood to be Jackie Denham and Linda Rimington, have written to the rest of the panel to say that they will resign from the charity if Mrs Ballard's name goes forward to the full council for approval.

The other two short-listed candidates are Michelle Thew, chief executive of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, and Maj Gen Michael Laurie.

A fifth short-listed candidate, Alec McGiven, who was director of England's failed bid to host the 2006 World Cup, has withdrawn.

A member of the ruling council said: "The choice is between a failed MP who was a social worker and someone who ran a company which lost hundreds of millions of pounds. It's not good."